Dominique Writes

Tall Poppy Syndrome: Kony2012

(“Emotions recollected in tranquillity.” That was Wordsworth’s famous definition of poetry. Well, last night was a “spontaneous overflow of emotion”. Tonight is tranquillity. Cutting and pasting last night’s lines here does not make them poetry, that’s for sure. It just makes them unedited.)

Form follows function.
Facebook gives us the option to ‘like’ or to ‘comment’.

What does this tell us about ourselves – after all, Facebook does not mould our behaviour; it’s just art imitating life, just reflecting what we are like already. And this is the way we think: Liking is simple. It’s easy. It’s one click. But those who are sophisticated, profound, literate. They comment. It’s no longer the chattering classes. It’s now the liking classes vs the commenting classes.

If you are sophisticated, erudite, or have delusions of being so. Or if you simply don’t want to be an Invisible Child, you comment. Scathingly. You like nothing. You think your simple act of criticism shows you’re somehow something more. You’re obviously a deeper thinker. You’re obviously more profound. You’re a wise old citizen of the world. You’re not just a naive, easy-to-impress liker.

And so we have the Kony 2012 campaign. A modern media phenomenon. And we all live our stereotypes:
* Those who view the YouTube early will passionately advocate it. The early adopters will champion the cause. They were there when the gold was discovered, and they will polish its worth.
* Those who discovered it later will come with more cynical hearts. If they, by nature, are of mass persuasion, they will take to it just because of its populist patter. The Bieber effect. If so many others think it’s good, it must be…
* And those who come to it last will be ever resentful. It shows them up. It is competition for their inherent value in a zero-sum world. If they can’t criticise the product, they will look for fault until they find it. And that is what they will trumpet. In Kony2012’s case, they can’t fault the facts, so they’ll say it’s a single story. Forgetting they’re telling a single story. Their insecurity will make it all about them: they’ll say it’s whites/Americans/foreigners/Westerners wanting to ride in as saviours. Without discussing whether there is an enemy to be saved from. They’ll say locals/Ugandans/Africans are not given credit for what they have achieved. Without themselves indicating whether anything much has actually been achieved, and by whom. (Never by whom.)
And then it will come back to money. Here on the poorest continent, it always does. They’ll complain that that organisation is not spending all its money here.
And that’s the real issue, isn’t it?
If all the money were spent here, without any question asked about what exactly we Africans are doing about the problem, we’d ‘like’ them a whole lot more.
But they’re not singing our praises, and they’re not simply handing us their money.
Bastards.
So we shoot them down.They have no right to be here. They are the root of all evil.

There’s a #1 enemy at the top of the list. And it’s not Joseph Kony.

PS: One notable exception stands out boldly: Greg Marinovich chooses to put his personal dislikes aside and to tell the real story in a column in the Daily Maverick. Kudos to him.